Https & http
-
I have my website (HTTP://thespacecollective.com) marked on Google Webmaster Tools as being the primary domain, as opposed to https. But should all of my on page links be http?
For instance, if I click the Home button on my home page it will take the user to http, but if you type in the domain name in the address bar it will take you to https.
Could this be causing me problems for SEO?
-
Thank you!
-
Yes, you should have both active in Search Console, but set the HTTPS to the preferred.
-
You will continue to have both http and https variants active in Google Search Console (you should also add the non www variants and set www as your preferred version).
You do not set anything up within GSC to direct HTTP to HTTPS (to tell Google that you are changing protocols), this is all done via redirects as Logan suggests. Here's a great page which should help clarify this for you:
http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/68435/moving-from-http-to-https-google-search-console
-
Thanks for the additional info but I think you missed my question. Please see the attached image.
I have HTTP and HTTPS set up on Google Search Console. Which one should I be using, or should both be active?
-
Yea, as the bots hit the URLs on your sitemap, it forces them to step through the redirect, which is what you want. They won't notice the new location if you don't point it out to them, and this is the most efficient way to do so.
*To be clear, since this gets confusing in, the URL of the location of your XML should be HTTPS://thespacecollective.com/sitemap.xml, but the URLs listed in it should be HTTP.
Also, add this line to your robots.txt file, as the first line or last line, doesn't really matter:
-
Thanks Logan. Now I have two sites set up in the Google Search Console, http and https. The http version has the sitemap and pretty much everything set up, should I just keep using this even though the site will now be https?
-
When you set up the 301 redirect rule that sends HTTP requests to HTTPS, Google will notice that. Leave your XML sitemap the way it is (with HTTP URL references) for 30 days. This will give them sufficient time to crawl your XML sitemap and learn your new protocol as they hit the redirects. Once most of your indexed pages have switched to HTTPS, you can update your XML to include the secure URLs.
-
Thank you for the links, I have read through each and have decided to change to HTTPS as you advise. I've done everything with the exception of informing Google that the new site is https as opposed to http. How do I make them aware?
I have set up http and https in Webmaster Tools, but how do I tell Google which one is relevant in order to stop any duplicate content issues?
-
From what I understand, you're already decided to split your traffic between HTTP and HTTPS. If this is correct, I would urge you to reconsider and redirect all traffic toward HTTPS versions as there are more issues to consider other than duplicate content, particularly as you are an e-commerce store. The latest (and future) versions of Chrome and Firefox will more clearly highlight unsecured connections. This is from Google's security blog: (https://security.googleblog.com/2016/09/moving-towards-more-secure-web.html?m=1)
"In following releases, we will continue to extend HTTP warnings, for example, by labelling HTTP pages as “not secure” in Incognito mode, where users may have higher expectations of privacy. Eventually, we plan to label all HTTP pages as non-secure, and change the HTTP security indicator to the red triangle that we use for broken HTTPS."
Chrome is the world's most popular browser, used by over 50% of all internet users. If your site is displaying a red triangle with the words 'Not Secure' next to it on ANY page on your site is going to turn visitors away. If over half you your visitors are receiving such a message the consequences will not be good.
Google are pushing users toward HTTPS (https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/https-tops-30-how-google-is-winning-the-long-war) so I would suggest that it's a mis-step to swim against the tide.
There are also other minor benefits to serving all of your pages via HTTPS; it's a minor ranking signal and better support for browser compression, among others.
Here's another article that covers the recent changes.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-is-requiring-https-for-secure-data-in-chrome/183756/
However you proceed, I hope this goes smoothly for you.
Good luck.
-
Perfect, thank you. I'm doing this as we speak!
-
Rolling back to HTTP for non-checkout pages is an option as well. The main point I was trying to make was to not have both versions of your URLs accessible/indexable.
-
Thanks for this Logan. Surely it makes more sense for me to simple change my website to HTTP and just keep Cart/Checkout, etc. as HTTPS? I see changing to HTTPS as a big risk and a lot of unnecessary work for very little benefit.
-
Hi,
Both versions HTTP and HTTPS of your site will render, that's a problem. Since you've got an SSL and it's been applied to the home page, you should make your entire site secure. Once you've done that, you'll want to apply a redirect rule that sends all HTTP requests to the HTTPS version. Because you're not currently doing that, you're running the risk of duplicate content issues. Once you've done that, yes, you should set the primary domain in Google Search Console (WMT) as HTTPS. There's a few other steps you'll want to take as well - Cryus Shepard wrote a great post detailing all necessary steps for secure migration, I highly recommend reading that.
Additionally, when people on your site are bouncing back and forth between HTTP and HTTPS, it's destroying your data integrity in Google Analytics. Going from a HTTP page to a HTTPS page breaks the session, and starts a new one that will be attributed to direct traffic. You can see how this would quickly become a nightmare for accurate analysis and measurement. If you follow the steps in Cyrus' post, your GA data should return to normal because users won't be going back and forth from secure to non-secure.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Keeping external links after moving from http to https?
Hi, Does anyone have experience moving a website to https? I am about to do so. I have 84 linking root domains and around 2k+ external links. If i move a website to https will these links be lost? And how to keep these links? Many thanks, Dusan
Technical SEO | | Chemometec0 -
Http://newsite.intercallsystems.com/vista-series/[email protected]
I keep getting crawl errors for urls that have email addresses on the end. I have no idea what these are. Here is an example: the-audio-visual-system/[email protected] Where would these be coming from, how are they created? How can i fix them? When I try to do a 301 redirect it doesn't work. Thanks for your help,
Technical SEO | | renalynd27
Rena0 -
Re: Auto Detection of Currency based on IP & Google SEO
Greetings to the fellow Moz community members! On an e-commerce site, I am using a script to change the default currency of storefront based on IP detection ( GBP for UK visitors, CAD for Canadian visitors and so on). My question is : can this create any problems at all in Google Crawling or Indexing? Will google be able to understand the setup? I don't think this should trigger the "cloaking" or presenting different content to search engines vs users, but just want to double check from the collective wisdom here. Thanks for reading, and wish you a good day ahead. Warm Regards Amit
Technical SEO | | amitgg0 -
Sudden data lost of links in Webmaster tools & search clicks too decreased to zero
Hi guys please help me to solve this webmaster tools issue and downfall of clicks and impressions. What is the Issue : I have managed hills self storage site since long time, but recently ( since few weeks ) in webmaster what I noticed is that, there is a constant reduction in clicks which reached zero thereafter it has been continuously stuck to zero, however impressions too started decreasing from the same time period and that too reached gradually to zero. What I have tested : I have tested Analytics Traffic which is increasing gradually Keywords ranking in Google Australia is also increasing gradually Before October 2014 Total links are 200+, In mid October 2014 it has started decreasing gradually & now it is showing “No Data Available”. 301 redirection is perfect, google fetching is also ok. What Enhancement we did : Site moved to a new server in October 2014 We switched our site pages from “http” to “https” in October 2014 Kindly reply to my above queries so that I can get back to my “Total Links”, “correct impressions” and “clicks” as previously in the webmaster tools ? Regards, Dave 2eevhoj.jpg zxpro5.jpg
Technical SEO | | akshaydesai0 -
Best & easiest way to 301 redirect on IIS
Hi all, What is the best and easiest way to 301 redirect URLs on IIS server? I got access to the FTP and WordPress back office, but no access to the server admin. Is there an easy way to create 301 redirect without having to always annoy the tech in charge of the server? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | 2MSens0 -
HTTP status code 302
When running Seomoz crawl report, I saw a link site https://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/?req=apply-visa with status code 302 and empty title tag Is this an error? and what should I do to fix this problem? Thank you,
Technical SEO | | JohnHuynh0 -
Base HREF set without HTTP. Will this cause search issues?
The base href has been set in the following format: <base href="//www.example.com/"> I am working on a project where many of the programming team don't believe that SEO has an impact on a website. So, we often see some strange things. Recently, they have rolled out an update to the website template that includes the base href I listed above. I found out about it when some of our tools such as Xenu link checker - suddenly stopped working. Google appears to be indexing the the pages fine and following the links without any issue - but I wonder if there is any long term SEO considerations to building the internal links in this manner? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Nebraska0 -
Https redirect
Hi there, a client of mine is asking me if Google would penalize to redirect from all the http urls to https (they want to change the security protocol). I assume it is going to work as a classic 301, right? so they might lose some authority in they way, but I am not 100% sure. Can anyone confirm this? does anyone has a similar experience? thanks a lot!
Technical SEO | | elisainteractive0